I began studying organized crime more
than seven years before becoming Batman. One of the first observations
I made then is still true today: the Italian Mafia in Gotham are the most
famous gangsters in the world. There’s a romanticized history in
movies like the Godfather and Goodfellas. There’s the real history of
thuggery and blackmail called mano nero forming within the first
waves of Sicilian immigrants; the Castellamarese War for domination, Luciano
Lansky and Seigel, Murder Incorporated, and the rise of the Five Families…
And there is a very murky present which often can’t distinguish between the
reality and fables of its own past.

Nowhere is that murky confusion more evident than in Carmine “The Roman”
Falcone.

To hear Falcone tell it, he became
capo di tutti capi, the ‘boss of bosses,’ by ending a bloody gang war:
first helping his predecessor assassinate the previous don and then killing
him before he could move into the vacated position. No one seems to
notice that’s pretty much the Lucky Luciano story, setting up Joe Masseria
for Sal Maranzano, then killing Maranzano almost immediately afterwards.
What makes the boast particularly suspect in Falcone’s case is that ‘Roman’
in his name. He touts it now like a badge of honor, but back then it
was anything but. He had no personal ties to Sicily, Calabria, or even
Naples. He was a nobody. And at that time, an unconnected nobody
couldn’t hope to grab for power by killing a boss without support in
Palermo.

So how did Falcone really come to power? Slowly. That’s the
best answer I or the FBI have ever been able to come up with. There
was no single, startling act. Just years of work, decades of it,
running the toughest crew on the South Side and leveraging a bloody
reputation to consolidate power. As he took over the gambling, he let
the money flow freely to his men, ensuring loyalty. When he moved into
prostitution, he did the same. Drugs, he did the same. He chose
which capos, soldiers, and associates were worth buying and he bought them,
it was that simple.

Edward Vaniel was not worth buying. At best, he was dumb muscle,
hired help Falcone used from time to time while he was building his empire.
But what, if anything, determined when he’d use an outsider like Vaniel?
That’s what was unclear. There was a connection, certainly, but it was
vague. Maddeningly vague.

There was nothing flashy in Carmine Falcone. Hollywood could never
make anything of him and neither would Mafia legend, so at some point he
started writing his own. That’s when he became “The Roman,” like he
was a Caesar. Even he’s begun to believe his fable, but before he was
The Roman, he was an ambitious nobody scheming to become the strongest capo
in Gotham. That’s when this strange undefined connection formed with
Edward Vaniel… and that’s why it was worth looking into.

“Infrared disengage,” Batman said sharply.

There was a click as the voice-responsive lenses snapped into the
off-position within the cowl, and a sigh as Nightwing achieved the same
effect by pulling his night vision binoculars away from his face.

“We are screwed,” he announced flatly.

The Falcone compound in Massapequa was a fortress. Blockbuster’s
headquarters in Bludhaven, even Ra’s al Ghul’s castle in Istanbul had
nothing on it—and that had a moat! This was a well-designed mixture of
classic proactive defenses and high-tech gadgetry: patrolling guards and
sophisticated cameras, massive stone walls concealing intricate sensors with
unknown capabilities. The old world style of the mansion and wooded
grounds belied the most advanced modern defenses, which Batman and Nightwing
supposed was the point. The same dichotomy had appeared in The Roman’s
Gotham City townhouse, but at least there they’d known what they were up
against.

After they’d met on the Moxton Building and confirmed that “The Roman”
was the one name that kept coming up in relation to Vaniel in both their
investigations, they both knew talking to Falcone was the next step.
So they’d proceeded to the townhouse.

One of the reasons The Roman had become so successful in building and
maintaining his criminal empire was his tendency to do things differently
than others in the business of organized crime. His outsider status
for so many years had given him an outsider’s perspective. This
allowed him to ignore the traditional ways of the old world dons—at least in
certain areas where it didn’t damage his prestige (although he did have a
tendency to overdo it in other areas to compensate). Most bosses in
Gotham and elsewhere still operated out of small rooms in the backs of
restaurants, “social clubs,” and other businesses. Carmine understood
that these were glaring beacons for law enforcement, so he moved his
operations into a remarkably ordinary townhouse in a small residential
neighborhood in the heart of the city. Over the years, he’d muscled
out several other residents and filled much of the block with his own
people; not lieutenants or soldiers, no one directly involved in criminal
enterprises, but workers from his warehouses, business owners and shop
keepers under his protection, anyone who would blend in and make the
neighborhood appear normal to the outside but still remain loyal to him.

Batman and Nightwing knew that in order to talk to Falcone, they’d have
to infiltrate the townhouse, and do so without alerting any of the
Falcone-friendly residents to their presence. Not an impossible job,
but not exactly an easy one either. Once they’d made the decision to
go after Falcone, they’d gone straight to his townhouse and given it a quick
once-over with the infrareds, just like they were doing now at his
out-of-town compound. It had been too close to dawn to do more, so
they’d retired to the satellite cave under the Wayne Tower (since it was
closer, Bruce said, although Dick suspected that he simply didn’t want to go
back to the manor) and spent the day pulling blueprints, studying floor
plans, investigating all that was known of the layout, design, and defensive
capabilities of Falcone’s Gotham City townhouse and the surrounding
neighborhood. When night fell, they waited one hour and then executed
their plan with flawless precision—only to find the place empty, apart from
a sixty-three year old housekeeper.

They quickly and silently searched the house, ultimately finding a
datebook with the notation that Falcone had gone to his “country estate” (as
the arrogant poser, still trying to come off as a Caesar, referred to the
out-of-town compound).

So now, with a day lost, here they were back at square one. Worse
than square one, actually. They were supposed to be talking to Falcone
by now. Instead, they were in the middle of the woods, looking over a
walled installation that made Fort Knox look like a convenience store.
Ten minutes after they’d arrived on-scene they realized why Falcone wasn’t
at the townhouse as expected: a phalanx of cars arrived at the compound,
delivering many of the Roman’s lieutenants and their personal guards.
A gathering of that size would attract too much attention in a residential
midtown neighborhood.

“I don’t know how we’re gonna get in,” Nightwing murmured. “It’ll
take all night, maybe even days, just figuring out what we’re up against.”

Batman’s eyes shifted within the mask to glare at him without turning.

“Six armed guards patrol the perimeter inside the wall,” he graveled.
“Two outside. There are a number of cameras, either standard or
heat-detecting, around the grounds. Presumably more cameras of either
type within the house. Motion detectors aren’t likely as it’s an
occupied residence. More guns inside are a certainty. Dogs are a
possibility…”

“Will you listen to yourself? ‘A
number of cameras,’ ‘either’ this kind or that, ‘presumably,’
‘unlikely,’ ‘a possibility.’ Batman, we don’t know what we’re up
against.”

Batman merely swallowed.

“It’s going to take time to get the
intel we need to pull this off,” Nightwing continued. “We could
wait until tomorrow night, wait for him to go back to the city and hit him
at the townhouse like we originally planned—that’s assuming he’s going right
back, of course.”

Dick knew he was beyond frustrated. Spending the whole day plotting
out their invasion of the townhouse had been torturous. Batman had
identified the next link in the chain that led to the answers he needed, and
anything that delayed him only made it more maddening.

If the plan had been to take down Falcone and his crew, Nightwing would
have been right on board with going in immediately. But all they
wanted was to talk to Falcone, which meant they needed to sneak in, catch
him off-guard, and alone. That required finesse, and Dick was pretty
certain that finesse wasn’t on Batman’s radar at the moment.

“Okay. If we don’t have the time
to prepare,” Nightwing said slowly, thinking out loud, “if we have to go in
tonight… then it’s gonna take time we don’t have to work out what
we’re up against… then more time we don’t have to figure a way
around it all… Unless—”

“No.”

“C’mon, Batman, it’s the obvious way.”

“No.”

“You know she can do it. You know she will; you only have to ask.”

“I don’t want her involved in this.”

“Bruce, we need her.”

“What did you say?”

“With her help, we can talk to Falcone before dawn. Without her…”

Dick’s words faded into muffled cotton, sound without meaning. The
only words that mattered were echoing in my brain: Want. Need.

“You wanted to but you didn’t need to,” Selina had said. “Wanting
to means that you had a choice.”

And needing meant that I
didn’t.

If I wanted to talk to Falcone any time soon, I needed Catwoman’s
expertise. I did not have a choice.

I knew if I called her, she would be with us outside the compound in
minutes. She could get there faster than we had; she was at the manor.
We’d come from the city…

But I hesitated, pointlessly thinking through the comparative drive times
from Bristol and midtown, and all the while Dick droned on about… something.
Loose connections. He said it was a lot to go through for some loose
connections.

I still wasn’t hearing him. All I could think of was how I didn’t
want either of them working on this. Wanting meant I was supposed to
have a choice. And yet…

Catwoman arrived at the Falcone compound eleven minutes later than Batman
predicted. As the minutes ticked by, he assumed he’d either misjudged
the speed of her Jaguar or she was deliberately driving slower than she was
capable of. Her engine was sufficiently quiet, there would be no
tactical reason to do so. The only reason would be spite.

..::I thought Dick was going to partner you,::.. she’d said
when he called.

“He is. But we need your expertise,” he’d explained, feeling
strangely detached from the conversation. It was the crimefighter
answering automatically, while the greater part of his brain kept cycling
through other thoughts: the hospital, the alley, the cave.

A long, uncomfortable pause answered whatever it was he’d just said… Yes,
of course, he said he needed her expertise to break into the Falcone
compound—after he’d shut her out of the case with studied cruelty and
avoided her for a day. Thinking to deflect the coming attack by
meeting the issue head on, he cleared his throat and said what he needed was
“that same expertise that got you John Klondeff’s jade collection.
That same expertise. It will save us hours. Selina, please.”

..::I’ll be right there,::.. she said. Even in his
detached condition, he noted the tone. There was something strange in
her voice that he’d never heard before. And now, she was taking nine
minutes more than he’d predicted…

Ten minutes…

While he waited, Batman studied the guards’ movements, plotting out their
routes and patterns. It was necessary, but it still felt like
pointlessly wasting time. Again.

He kept hearing that strange inflection in Selina’s voice on the phone,
something hollow, distant.

Eleven…

When she finally did arrive, she had two backpacks full of specialized
gear. She brought them to a different vantage point overlooking the
compound—a strategically inferior one as far as Batman was concerned, but
she insisted. She borrowed Nightwing’s binoculars and muttered
something he couldn’t hear. Something about the trees being thinner,
or maybe it was the woods, how something had changed or hadn’t been changed.
Then she bit her lip, thinking. She hadn’t looked at him once.

She switched the binoculars to thermal
view and commented on the number of people in Falcone’s office. Batman
confirmed it, and told her what they knew about the arrivals and what they
surmised about a meeting taking place inside. Since they didn’t know
how many people could be coming in or out of the house (and, more
importantly, when), they would have to cover their tracks both going
in and coming out of the compound.

The high concrete wall was decorated at intervals with inset metal
squares depicting scenes of ancient Rome: the profile of an emperor, a
centurion, a frieze of the Roman senate… Catwoman pointed to one of
these, the one with a portrait of Seneca, and said it hid the controls for
the front gate and the outdoor cameras. She mapped out the best route
to get to the second story window, pointing out camera angles, cover spots,
and areas to avoid. Batman started to outline what he’d noted of the
guards’ patrol routes, but she waved him off as if she already knew and was
trying to concentrate.

He hated the loss of control, but reminded himself it was the expertise
that they needed—the time her expertise bought them that he needed—and
needing meant there was no choice.

Catwoman was mapping out a plan where
Nightwing would take out a specific guard when he entered the blind spot of
that camera, opening a path for her to reach the control panel and
disconnect that camera, so Batman could get that guard,
redirect this camera so Nightwing could get that one, and then she
would advance to here and get to work on the second floor window,
while they picked off the remaining guards as they came around…

Batman couldn’t see anything special about the metal frieze with the
profile of Seneca that differentiated it from all the others, and a strange
unease settled over him. Had he missed something, some little
indicator that she could see and he couldn’t? He asked how she knew
that particular panel hid the controls.

For the first time since she arrived, Catwoman looked at him—and for the
first time since leaving the hospital, Bruce saw something beyond his own
rage and pain.

“I just know,” she said simply.

The words were simple.
The voice was professional, confident, and detached. But the eyes,
there was no hint of the woman he knew in those eyes. No Selina, and
no Catwoman either…

14½ minutes later, Carmine Falcone
glanced at the clock on his desk while Fat Stefano’s boy Anthony gave his
report. Like all new lieutenants, he spoke last, and like all new
lieutenants, he hogged the spotlight when his turn finally came. Like
all new lieutenants, he was caught up in the glamour of being called out to
the Don’s country compound to give his report among all these senior capo
regimes, just like in the movies. Like all new lieutenants, he
didn’t realize that his Don (and all the other capos) would have rather
wrapped it up an hour ago, had a glass of sambuca, and said goodnight.

“So it looks like we’re looking at about a ten percent bump in profits
from the West Side this month.” Antony Crispi concluded boldly.

“That’s wonderful news.” Falcone smirked at the young man, getting
up from the desk and gently patting his shoulder. “But don’t get too
excited yet. There’s an ebb and flow to these things. When the
bump is continuous for six months, then we get excited. Okay?”

“Yes sir,” Antony replied, glancing around the room timidly as the other
capos chuckled lightly. The boy was new. He was bound to be a
little eager to please. They’d all been there.

“Alright, boys. Good work. I’ll see all of you at your
regular times at the townhouse next week.” Carmine shooed them away, each
man making sure he said ‘Good Night’ to the boss.

Once the room was empty, Carmine strolled confidently over to the wet bar
to pour himself a brandy, not really caring for the anise sting of sambuca
when he wasn’t playing The Godfather Don Falcone with his capos. He’d
give those West Side profits six months to show what they were really doing,
but this new kid he gave a month, tops. Either Antony learned to
settle down, or Carmine was going to have to reconsider his promotion
practices—and the boy’s future… employment.

He picked a cube from the ice bucket and a shiver ran down his spine,
followed by a low, rumbling voice behind him.

“Falcone.”

Carmine froze for a split second, then casually dropped the cube into his
glass.

“Ah. Batman. What a pleasant surprise,” he intoned,
over-cheerful as he picked up a crystal decanter and poured several fingers
of brandy into his glass. “To what do I owe this honor?”

Carmine turned slowly, a broad smile
on his face, to see Batman standing across the room with his arms crossed
over his chest. Standing next to him was the younger hero called
Nightwing who, it was rumored, was actually Batman’s former sidekick, Robin,
all grown up—but not that grown up, from the looks of him.

“And the Junior Bat!” Falcone added, tipping his glass at both of them.
“Must be my lucky night. I win the lottery or something?”

“We need to talk about one of your associates,” the Dark Knight growled.

“I’ve got a lot of ‘associates,’ Bats. What kind of associate?”

“Former.”

“Ah! Well, I’ve got a lot
more of that kind. Care to narrow it down a little? This
‘former associate’ got a name?”

“Edward Vaniel.”

For only an instant, Carmine’s
sarcastic smile faltered, replaced with a flash of irritated anger.
Almost as suddenly, the smile reappeared. “Vaniel? And just how
is ol’ Easy Eddie these days?”

Batman and Nightwing glanced at each other. They’d both expected
the standard denials (“Never heard of the guy”), but not only did Falcone
admit to hearing of Edward Vaniel, he used his old nickname with careless
familiarity.

Batman returned his attention to Falcone and answered his question
matter-of-factly.

“Dying.”

Carmine’s smile widened. “Oh, now ain’t that a shame.” He
glanced down into his glass, the smile never leaving his face.
“Gunshot wound?”

“Cancer.”

“I used to tell him all that living would catch up to him one day.”
Carmine shrugged, taking a sip of the drink. “Too bad for him.
But I’m afraid I’m not going to be too much help in that arena.
Haven’t spoken to the guy in… well, a long, long time. Last I’d heard,
he was up the river.”

“Thirteen years. Attempted murder.”

“Like I said, a long time,” Carmine smirked, setting his glass on the
edge of a small desk.

Nightwing, who had been standing quietly off to the side, finally chimed
in.

“The way we hear it, he’s done some work for you since then. Since
he’d gotten out.”

Falcone shot Nightwing the same look he’d give one of his junior
lieutenants who spoke out of turn, then he turned a questioning eye toward
Batman, it being his prerogative to reprimand a subordinate or not.
When the Dark Knight’s face remained as impassive as ever, Carmine glanced
back at Nightwing.

“You know, Junior, I’ve got a lot of
people working for me. Many of them indirectly, so I don’t even know
about them. Hell, half the time I only hear about it through the
grapevine a year later. Even heard a rumor that you worked for
me, indirectly, for a short while. That can’t be true, can it?”

Nightwing said nothing, and Carmine smirked again.

“It’s called ‘delegating authority,’ Son. Comes with being the
boss. Maybe you’ll learn about that one day.”

Falcone could have gone round-and-round all night with the pompous
upstart, but Batman stepped back in.

“Vaniel’s recent activities are
irrelevant. My questions involve a much older case. Around the
time when you and he were working together, back when you were both
two-bit thugs.”

Carmine shot Batman a disgusted look at this reminder he wasn’t always
“The Roman Don Falcone,” but then he replanted the broad smile across his
face. “I’m still not sure how much help I can be, Bats Old Man.
The old memory ain’t what it used to be. What kind of case are we
talking about here?”

“Double homicide.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t have been
involved with anything like that.”

“What about Vaniel?”

“Gee, Bats, I couldn’t say. Easy Eddie was into a lot of different
things.”

“Did he ever talk about those ‘different things?’”

Carmine chuckled. “When did he
not? The guy liked to talk. A lot. If Easy Eddie did even
half the things he bragged about back then, well, he’d probably be standing
here now, having his home invaded by the likes of you, instead of
rotting away in a hospital bed.”

“I never said he was in a hospital bed.”

“Quite right,” Falcone agreed, smirking again as he picked up his glass
and took another sip. “In any event, Vaniel has a bit of a history
when it comes to… flapping his gums.” His face darkened slightly.
“Why, is he picking that habit up again? Talking about things he shouldn’t
be?”

“That’s what I’m trying to determine.”

There was a tense beat of silence as the two men stared at each other.

“Did he ever happen to mention the Wayne murders?”

Carmine stared for a moment, then
rocked his head back and laughed heartily. After a few seconds, he
wiped a non-existent tear from the corner of his eye and tried to suppress
the chuckle still rumbling in his chest. “Th-the Wayne
murders?!”

Batman stepped forward, narrowing the gap between himself and Falcone,
and growled in a sinister tone, “Something funny?”

Carmine ignored the threat, still laughing to himself.

“I’d say so. Are you telling me that on his deathbed, Eddie Vaniel
is confessing to the Wayne murders? He drop any other bombshells?
Was he the one on the Grassy Knoll? He give you directions to Jimmy
Hoffa’s grave?”

Batman grunted his distain.

“Are you saying you never heard
him mention it?”

“I’m not saying that at all, Bats.
In fact, he didn’t just mention it, he bragged about it—on several
occasions!”

Batman and Nightwing exchanged
glances, then both returned their attention to Falcone. The mob boss
looked at both of them staring at him and chuckled even more. “Of
course he admitted to it. Half the guys I hung around with back
then admitted to it. Hell, I think I even confessed to it once
or twice. It was a high-profile crime, little real evidence and no one
was ever caught. Dream situation for anyone looking to make a name for
himself. If you could convince people that you were the one who got
away with one of the biggest crimes in this city’s history, it was an
instant credibility chip. Back then, half the players in Gotham said
they’d killed Dr. Wayne and his wife. The truth is no one
knows who did it and anyone saying different is flat-out lying.”

In the vent above the study, Catwoman listened while Falcone went round
and round with Batman and Nightwing. She couldn’t quite believe she
was inside that house, the mansion at the very center of the Falcone
compound. The one she’d looked into when she snuck away from Miss
Corinne’s. That house that seemed to have everything she’d lost when
her parents died. Of all the places she never wanted to come back to,
let alone break into as Catwoman…

“So where is Easy Eddie holed up these days?” Carmine Falcone’s voice
drifted up from the room below. “I’d like to send him a get well
card.”

…but what could she do? Batman
needed her. Bruce needed her. Bruce, who really had given her
everything that she’d lost back then. It was the most important case
of his… He’d given her a home ten times more luxurious than this one
that she’d coveted. And he’d given her the love and the family it had
come to represent in a lonely little girl’s mind… It was his parents.
The son of a bitch called him to the hospital and said that he’d… She
was in that home that she shared with Bruce when he called and asked
her to come out to Massapequa and break him into Carmine Falcone’s compound.
It was the most important case—the most important event—in his life that he
was investigating. It was… He needed her criminal talents in
conjunction with… He was Batman. Before he was ever Bruce to
her, he was Batman. She really had, in a roundabout way, found love
and a home and a family again, through crime. Just like this house she
once coveted came from crime. The ironies were suffocating if you
thought about them, and she kept telling herself not to. They didn’t
mean anything, they were just… crime in Gotham was a small world and it all
interconnected.

Catwoman started at a violent slamming below, punctuated by the piercing
crinkle of broken glass.

“Vaniel’s son is off-limits,” Batman’s
voice growled hatefully, a softer glass-crunching hinting that he’d slammed
Falcone against a wall where a mirror hung and was now pressing him against
the broken shards. “If you want to punish the son for the sins of the
father, that’s a two-way street,” Batman hissed. “Anything happens to
Edward Vaniel’s son, I will hold you personally responsible.
Anything happens to Edward Vaniel’s son, and I’m taking it out on yours.
How are the twins nowadays, Carmine? I hear Metropolis is nice
this time of year.”

There were a few more jabs and threats that Catwoman didn’t follow as she
prepared to withdraw from the vent and the house. She was to reset the
cameras and jam the front gate once Batman and Nightwing had gone, then
rendezvous with them at the Batmobile.

Down below, Batman had let Falcone go. Carmine lunged to the desk,
pulled a gun and turned to shoot—but found only an empty room and an open
window to shoot at.

For all its proximity to Gotham, the sky above Massapequa is darker than
most city-dwellers ever see. The roads are even darker. Batman
had told Nightwing to drive the Jaguar back to the house. Catwoman
would be riding with him in the Batmobile. They had something to
discuss.

But then in the car, racing down that black road under that black sky, he
didn’t say anything. The same unease that had hit him outside the
compound tickled up his spine. Selina waited… waited… and finally,
giving up, she started to ask about Falcone. She’d only opened her
mouth, when at last Batman spoke.

“Unless you have x-ray vision or some extra sensory ability I’m unaware
of, it’s not possible to ‘just know’ the controls were behind that
particular panel.”

“I salute you, World’s Greatest Detective,” she said softly. They
drove in silence for a minute. Then:

“How did you know that Seneca panel opened up, and what the controls
behind it were for?”

“Why does it matter so much?” she asked gently.

“It doesn’t, in and of itself,” he graveled.

It didn’t… It shouldn’t. But somehow it did matter.

It was instinct, initially.
Catwoman knew something that he didn’t; she could see something looking into
the compound that he couldn’t. It made him question if he was missing
details he should be seeing, if his mind was misfiring somehow.
If not, then it was an opportunity to learn. Batman wasn’t so arrogant
as to think he knew all things, and when he did bring in an expert for some
specialized task, he always remained open to… She saw something he didn’t,
and the crimefighter core of his mind—the only part functioning on full
capacity at the moment—had snatched instinctively for the new information.
He asked the question, “How do you know?” but when she wouldn’t answer… it
awakened something. And now, it was strangely important to know why.

“You’ve never held back before,” he
said, more to himself than her. “You’re usually more than eager to
share any burglary tips.”

“It’s the safe,” she said quietly. “Like the safe… Do you think
you’re the only one with a childhood, Bruce?”

The car screeched to a stop, slamming her into the seatbelt then back
against the seat with equal force. Behind them, the Jaguar swerved and
drove around to avoid crashing into them.

Batman turned to the passenger seat, staring blankly without seeing. The
frank mention of the safe had torn into his gut like a knife.

“Do you? Do you think you’re the only one that gets to put up a ‘no
trespassing’ sign? It took a lot for me to come out here tonight.
But I did it, and I did it for you. Let that be enough, okay?”

There was a distant rapping. Like a man waking from the deepest
sleep, Batman vaguely realized it was Nightwing knocking on the window.
He opened it, growled that there was no problem, and then drove off without
saying more.

The farther they got from the compound, the more Selina felt like herself
again—her real self, her present self, not the ghost of a lonely
twelve-year-old lost in the psyche of a grown cat burglar with a job to do.
The more she settled the disquiet in her own head, the more she became aware
of Bruce again. Of Bruce not talking, and that pulse of dark intensity
streaming off him in waves.

It was only once they’d reached the cave, when she’d exited the Batmobile
and headed for the stairs, that he spoke again.

“This mystery reason you won’t tell me, is that why it took you an extra
eleven minutes to meet us at the compound?”

She stopped and gave a sad smile.

“You really are the best. No joke.”

“Is that why?”

“Yes,” she said, turning to face him. “I knew enough about the
grounds out there that I wanted to bring some special equipment that I
haven’t used in a long time, so I had to dig it out of the closet. I
didn’t time it, but if you say it was eleven minutes, there it is.”

He grunted… and she looked at him shrewdly.

“You thought it was personal. You thought I was punishing you
because you’d told me to stay, like a cocker spaniel, and then told me to
come, like a cocker spaniel?”

He grunted noncommittally, then after a moment, he nodded slowly, once.

“Something like that.”

She turned away and took a step towards the stairs, saying she thought
Alfred was still up and she’d have him bring Bruce and Dick coffee.

“Selina, wait!”

The words had sprung out of his mouth
again—Selina, wait!—an instinct, like countering a gust of wind
mid-swing on the Batline.

But she was going—that’s what
he wanted, wasn’t it?

She obviously didn’t consider herself invited to join the investigation
just because they’d needed her at Falcone’s. So she was going.
It would have been one less to get rid of if he’d let her go, but he stopped
her.

“Yes?”

Bruce froze for a moment, unable to
come up with a response or even wrap his head around why he’d asked
her to stop in the first place. Before he could formulate an answer,
Nightwing returned, extolling the virtues of the Jaguar as a truly superior
driving machine. Then he kissed Selina on the cheek and thanked her
for helping out. It was an obvious effort to lighten the mood at the
end of a long, grueling episode, an effort that made Selina smile and
Bruce’s brow crease slightly. Dick seemed to take her continued
involvement as a given.

Bruce glanced at him for a second, then looked back at Selina, the
crimefighter core of his mind taking hold.

“As someone who’s been there, professionally, did anything strike you
about Falcone’s behavior with Batman and Nightwing?”

“Well,” Selina bit her lip, thinking, “since you asked, and now that I
think about it… Yeah. I thought he was uncharacteristically
loose-lipped about the whole thing.”

Dick nodded, adding “Just like the guys we talked to last night.
Falcone seemed almost eager to give us information.”

“I noticed the same thing,” Batman graveled with a knowing glint.
“He was fishing. He wants Vaniel and was hoping to use the situation
to find him.”

“So there is a real connection between them,” Selina purred, a cat
contemplating cream.

They had new information, and that propelled everyone back to Workstation
One and the stacks of evidence they’d sifted through before.

Over the next half-hour, Bruce became increasingly frustrated as folders
were stacked on top of floppy disks, boxes of cassettes blocked the primary
CD tray, and finally, he knocked an evidence bag off the edge of the console
as he reached for Dick’s notes on the FBI surveillance photos.

He cursed, stood, and stalked off towards the chem lab.

“Dick, get in here,” he called a moment later, and the two of them
maneuvered a large round worktable into the main chamber of the Batcave.
Chairs followed, commandeered from Alfred’s pantry, and the evidence was
shuttled over in armfuls. Finally, the three reconvened around the ad
hoc conference table just as Alfred arrived with coffee.

Dick kept circling back to Falcone’s credibility. Bruce repeated
what he’d said earlier: Falcone was fishing. What information he gave
them was dangled in the hopes of learning more. He wanted Vaniel
himself and was hoping to leverage the vigilantes’ interest in order to find
him. But why would he be looking?

“Waaaait-a-minute,” Dick murmured, looking vacantly at a stack of federal
wiretaps. Then he dove into a bundle of files and began sifting
through papers. “Remember Detective Porpora,” he said as he searched,
“from that multi-jurisdictional task force on organized crime, the ones that
helped clean Blockbuster’s dirty cops out of Bludhaven a few years back?
I thought I remembered—Yeah, here it is. Hey, nice picture—I thought I
remembered him telling me the CIA was putting a case together about that
time, to take down the Falcones.

“Now that rumor comes out every few years, but that time, it seemed like
something else. Wasn’t forgotten a week later, I remember that; it
stayed around for quite some time. The talk was…” He paused and looked
from Bruce to Selina and back to Bruce before continuing, “the Agency had an
informant ready to name names. Eventually, nothing came of it but…”

“But if Vaniel was the informant,” Bruce said ominously.

The Oracle avatar had now symbolically
joined Bruce, Dick, and Selina at the conference table, even though she
technically appeared only on a sidescreen adjacent to the table. It
was forty minutes since the avatar had sprung from its flat, dormant gray to
the lively, animated green that meant Barbara was online and actively
working behind it; however she hadn’t participated in the meeting for more
than half an hour. There was only faint clicking coming over her
channel, an occasional whispered curse, and the one time Dick asked how it
was going, a furious “Not now, not now, don’t break my rhythm-oh DAMNIT,
Dickey!”

“Oops,” Dick mouthed and returned his attention to the photographs he was
viewing.

Bruce pored over the resumes and
personal histories of CIA employees working at the Gotham Division Office at
the time of the Falcone rumor—but he found himself glancing up every few
sentences and looking around the table. Selina was clicking through a
slideshow of old FBI surveillance photos, while Dick sifted through
Porpora’s notes on them… Bruce returned his attention to the resume of
one Allan Dickinson from Grosse Pointe… but found it increasingly difficult
to focus on anything. His mind kept wandering and he looked up again,
seeing all of them working together this way. It’s not what he’d ever
envisioned when he began his mission as Batman, this collection of people
around him, all working toward the same goals. He certainly never
imagined that work on this case—this case that was so personal for
him—would have included so many others…

“The whole family’s here.”

“What?” Bruce asked, the statement jarring him from his own mind.

“The whole family’s there,” Dick repeated, pointing to the screen.
“Porpora’s notes on the Falcones. There’s some big meeting going on.
The Feds thought it was a war council, but when Porpora saw these shots, he
realized…”

“That it was a family thing,” Selina finished, noting the undeniable
resemblance among the people in the photos.

Bruce grunted, nodding. He tried to return his attention to the
file in his hands: Allan Dickinson. Midwest, Norwegian-Irish ancestry,
recruited out of the University of Michigan. Nothing in the personal
history that would make him a candidate for undercover work with the urban
mobs. Grew up in an idyllic lake town, not ethnically diverse… The
psych profile was even less promising: broken home, bad relationship with
the father…

“It’s the son.”

Selina’s voice tore him away this time. He looked up directly at
her, but her eyes were locked on a file in her hand.

“What?” Dick asked the question before Bruce could verbalize it.

“It’s this one,” Selina reiterated. “This FBI schmuck who based
their entire case on getting Migliosi to turn state’s evidence.”

“Jesus,” Dick stared aghast at the
file as Selina offered it to him. “One guy? No wonder they
could never make it stick.”

“That may be why Porpora had a hard time convincing the Agency to open
their own investigation,” Bruce offered grimly. “With such flimsy
evidence to start with, they’d basically be starting from scratch.”

“Which it looks like they did,” Dick confirmed, passing a stack of notes
to Bruce.

Dick continued to explain what he’d
read so far while Bruce glanced through the notes. He heard Dick
talking but his mind focused in on the paperwork in his hands. All the
CIA inherited from the bureau was hearsay and conjecture, an entire file of
little more than street rumors, what the Falcone family might have
been involved with… and nothing at all about a snitch. Bruce kept
looking, his eyes poring through the file looking for anything. He
found himself getting more and more frustrated, like it was right there,
hiding in plain sight, if only he could see it…

“You’re losing your mind.”

Bruce’s eyes jumped up at Selina, realizing it had been her voice again.
For some reason, he expected to see her looking back at him, but she was
looking at Dick instead.

“Oh please,” Dick smirked. “I lost that years ago.”

They both chuckled lightly, but Bruce just stared back and forth between
them as Dick rifled through what looked like a stack of criminal records.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t remember correctly. Aha!
Bingo! The timing fits—Porpora told me about the CIA’s investigation
right around the same time that Vaniel would have gotten out of jail…”

Bruce shook his head and refocused on the notes in front of him, but
wondered absently if he shouldn’t return to the agency bios, work out who in
the Gotham division office would be assigned to a Falcone task force if one
had existed… That boy from the circus and the cat burglar that meowed and
grinned her way past all of Batman’s defenses… sitting there, despite his
best efforts, working together sifting through the minutia of federal mob
surveillance, and all because he—

“Got it!” Oracle’s hologram shouted suddenly, pulling all of their
attention to the screen. “Bruce, I got it. Bits of a file hidden
under three reformats on an agency hard drive. There was definitely
someone named Vaniel who’d had two meetings with a SAC at the Gotham office
at the time this memo was written, and was scheduled for a third. The
fragment of the subject line I recovered has a code that means they’re
creating a social security number, and that means witness protection.”

Dick let out a low whistle.

The Oracle head flickered out and Barbara’s face appeared on the screen.

“Look, Boss, I’ll keep looking. But given how deep this was buried,
I don’t know if there’s anything more to be found electronically. Now
that you know where to look, you’d probably have more luck checking the
paper files.”

Selina turned to Bruce, and despite the cold void in his eyes, she
offered a shy, affectionate smile.

“Breaking into a high-security CIA
division office in the heart of downtown Gotham,” Dick prompted.
“Selina, I don’t suppose we could impose on you again to…”

“I wouldn’t mind another outing before sunrise,” she said, still looking
at Bruce. “If I’m wanted.”

For a brief moment their eyes met, and somewhere beneath the vacant
expression, she caught the faintest glimmer. His jaw suddenly set with
a new resolve.

“Let’s go.”

Inside the CIA office, Batman was rifling through a filing cabinet, while
Catwoman read through the folders he was stacking for her on the desk after
he gave them a quick skim. Nightwing leaned against a bank of similar
cabinets, watching. He’d already finished his share of the search and
found nothing.

“Is it just me, or was Falcone’s place a lot harder to get into than
here?”

Batman grunted noncommittally around the flashlight in his teeth and kept
searching through the files.

“Meow,” Catwoman answered without looking up.

“I mean, seriously, it’s the Central Intelligence Agency. You’d
think these guys knew more about security than, well, anyone—eh, I mean,
other than Catwoman, obviously. Maybe they should pick up Falcone just
to get some tips on how to secure a base…”

Batman suddenly yanked a file out of the drawer and opened it, his eyes
quickly scanning the pages.

“You find something?” Nightwing swung around so he was peering over
Batman’s shoulder at the file.

“Yes.” Batman dropped the file folder on top of the open drawer and
pulled the flashlight out of his mouth, holding it in his hand instead,
while Catwoman got up from the desk and peered over his other shoulder.

“A dead end,” Batman grunted
disgustedly. “It says that Vaniel was the informant they were
working with to take down Falcone several years ago. But they
eventually had to drop it.”

“Why?”

“Lack of credibility in the witness,” Batman read from the file.

Nobody spoke.

The words hung in the air, the implication clear: Edward Vaniel was too
much of a liar for the CIA to use him.

Batman grunted, then suddenly turned away and harshly whispered a
“Dammit!” under his breath. Catwoman had to step back to avoid his
running into her, but she softly moved up behind him and placed a hand on
his shoulder. Nightwing kept scanning the file, pulling out his own
flashlight to continue reading. Not seeming to notice the hand on his
shoulder, Batman stood in the center of the room, clenching and unclenching
his fists. He felt like he was so close… so damn close… he just
couldn’t fit all the pieces together.

“Oh crap,” Nightwing muttered, “it gets worse.”

Batman and Catwoman both spun back around, eying him curiously.

“Easy Eddie wanted to make sure that
he wasn’t going to get double-crossed by the Agency, so he brought a
lawyer with him to all of his conversations with the agents.”

“Not unheard of,” Batman remarked. “What’s the prob—”

He froze, the wheels turning in his head.

“It’s not that he had a lawyer with him,” Nightwing continued.
“It’s who the lawyer was…”

Batman guessed the name just as Nightwing read it off the page:

“David Vaniel.”

Batman moved over to join Nightwing back at the cabinet. There were
mentions of David’s assistance in bringing his father in, getting him to
work with the Agency on the case against Falcone.

“He lied to me,” Batman grunted harshly. “He told me he had nothing
to do with his father until he showed up sick.”

“In all fairness,” Selina countered, “he probably didn’t think it was
relevant. If he didn’t know why his dad was asking for you, why toss
something like this out there unless he had to.”

“It still begs the question: What else did he lie about?” Batman stared
off into nothingness as his mind calculated the possibilities.
Nightwing kept paging through the file. As she had earlier with
Batman, Catwoman picked up the sheets Nightwing wasn’t reading, scanning for
details missed on a quick skim.

“Huh. It looks like the talks
just stopped,” Nightwing was saying. “They had a meeting on the 15th,
everything was proceeding as planned, then the Vaniels suddenly stopped
showing up… Wait, here it is… Something came up—threatened the immunity
package they were putting toget—”

He froze mid-sentence, stopped by the gentle pressure of a clawed cat
hand pressing lightly into his.

“Br—Batman,” a shaken female voice said weakly.

Batman returned his attention to the file and felt a lump like a boulder
drop into his stomach. Catwoman was holding a tabbed subfolder marked
“Informant Bkgnd and Vetting.” In the file was a newspaper clipping—one he
knew well. It was a Gotham Times cover story about a tragedy in an
alley in downtown Gotham—the brutal slaying of Thomas and Martha Wayne.
Next to the headline, handwritten in red ink, were the words: